A key focus of this blog is the history of Jacksons in Ireland. I am specially curious about those who may be related to Sir Thomas Jackson (1841-1915). His life is key to understanding how a dozen or so young men, sons of Irish tenant farmers, shaped the future of international banking in the Far East in the late 1800s. I also use this blog as a place for playful posts: book and restaurant reviews, recipes, and events in my life. WARNING: Note the date of each post. Some may be outdated.

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Friday, February 15, 2013

A scene in Julie and Juliamakes Boeuf
Bourguignon recipe look as if it were a major undertaking. It is actually a
snap. One can even improvise and make it easier still. I do. For me, it is one of those meals that I can do with one hand tied behind my back. Well, almost.
Here my dumbed down approach, which is still knock-out delicious.After all, it isreally nothing
more than beef stew with red wine.

Sharon’s dumbed-down Boeuf
Bourguignon

I use a 4 quart casserole pot that works as well on top of the
stove as in it. It is one of those porcelain-covered cast iron jobs. Sometimes, I
even serve it right out of this pot. After all, it is comfort food.

Ingredients

What do to

3 lbs stew beef

I usually buy stewing
beef sold as a pot roast or chuck steak because it is cheaper than beef that is already cut up. Then I trim the fatty bits, and toss them into the pot where I render them so I can use
the fat to braise the beef. If I need more fat, I add some oil. Meanwhile, I cut the beef into bite-sized pieces, then you sear them in the rendered fat.

You need to sear the beef fast at a fairly high heat. As
soon as the pieces are browned, remove them from the pot. NOTE: Do not crowd them, or else the
moisture released will steam rather than brown them. Do them bit by bit and
remove each batch before adding more. When they are all done, pour off the
excess fat,

3 cups red wine
that tastes good enough to drink

Use it to deglaze
the browned bits from the bottom of the pot. NOTE: Full bodied wines from France are my choice.

2 cups beef
boullion

This is the
cheating part – I don’t make the broth from scratch. I use one can of
condensed beef broth and a canful of water.Add the seared beef to the wine in the pot, and then add the broth.

1 T tomato paste

3 cloves finely
chopped garlic

½ tsp fresh thyme

Add these three
ingredients to the rest of the ingredients in the pot, and stir. There should be enough liquid to cover the
meat. If not, add more broth or water. NOTE:
I keep tablespoons of tomato paste frozen and at the ready. It is simple.
I plop 1T mounds of it on some waxed paper, freeze
them, and then pop them into a Ziploc baggie.

Once the beef,
broth, wine and seasonings have reached a simmer point, put the covered pot into
a 325F oven, and you are free to go and read a book and drink wine for 2 ½ hours. Beneath is
what you need for the final stage:

1 lb fresh
mushrooms

My favourites are
King Oyster mushrooms, but you can’t get them everywhere. Crimini mushrooms
are my 2nd choice. Clean them, and then chop them into quarters or
slices, whatever suits your fancy. Think bite-sized.

18-24 small
onions – 1” diameter

This is a second
place where cheating may be desirable. Small onions are finicky, although if
you want to impress someone – even yourself – they are the way to go. Hunks
of onion work pretty well too. Again, think bite-sized.

½ T oil

2 T butter

Heat this
until it froths, then drop in the chopped mushrooms, and toss them until they
are slightly brown. Do likewise with the onions – only slightly carmelized.

After the beef
has been simmering for 2 ½ hours, add the onions and mushrooms, and simmer
for ½ hour. Remove from the oven. Pour off at least 2 cups of the broth which
you will then add slowly to the roux that you will make next.

3 T softened
butter

3T Flour

Make a roux. If
you don’t know how, Google roux.
Once the flour & butter are ready, add some of the broth, slowly at
first, then whisk, then add more, until you have added about 2 cups of liquid
and the liquid has thickened. Then return it to the meat mixture, stir it in,
and pop it back into the oven while you make a salad or whatever.

Serve with
potatoes, or egg noodles, and cooked veg and/or a robust salad. Oh yes, and open
another bottle of a decent, affordable red wine. One worthy of you.

The text in the photo
says: For taking this photograph J.M.
Johnson, Ex-Suspect and Amateur Photographer was convicted underthe Statute Edward III AD 1341 at Dundalk
Petty Sessions 2nd June 1887 and underwent one months imprisonment
in Dundalk Jail.

Land League Hut, Shortstone, Co. Louth. .... Sketch taken from
photograph by Mr. J.M. Johnston.

I first saw this picture in
the study of Willie Tracey, an elderly farmer who lives and farms at
Shortstone, Co. Louth. He has the hands of a hard-working man, a man who never
hesitates to muck right in and put things to rights no matter how recalcitrant
the machinery or the livestock or whatever. Salt
of the earth is a phrase that comes to mind. Gentleman is another.

In a piece that he
wrote with Brendan McArdle and Niall Carven, he tells the story behind the
hut that is featured in this sketch:

Inscribed on a fine headstone in Bridge a Crinn churchyard is the name
of a widowed woman evicted from her holding in 1882. After the eviction,
members of the local Land League with a 20 strong cavalcade of farm carts
headed for Barrack St. Railway Station.Here they loaded up with sufficient sleepers and materials to erect a
wooden hut on a small plot of ground made available by the Coulters of
Shortstone. After the woman had taken up residence in the hut, a young
neighbouring lad named Peter McArdle used visit her daily with a navvy can of
milk.

On arriving one bitterly cold February morning in 1903 when a fierce
gale had uprooted trees and caused widespread damage during the night, but
worse for the unfortunate woman, had blown in the window of the hut. Not being
able to close it properly she suffered severe hypothermia and despite the best
efforts of young Peter who secured the window and summoned help she died
shortly afterwards at the cruel hands, it could be said of landlordism.

Part of this sad tale has its
roots in the mid-1800s agrarian unrest in Co. Louth. To better understand it, it
is worth going back to February 21, 1849, when Samuel Coulter, a farmer in the
townland of Shortstone, was ambushed. The gunman had fired at short range. There
were powder burns on the back of Coulter’s coat. One of the five balls that had
penetrated his clothing had lodged in the small of his back.

Bear in mind that this attack happened
just before the second growing season after the calamitous potato blight of
1847. The after-effects of a famine are often just as bad if not worse than the
famine itself. Many of the people in the region were beyond desperate. Another
factor in this assault is that Coulter was not only a successful farmer, but
also acted as a bailiff on behalf of a neighbouring landlord. He would have
been involved in some ejections. Middle-men like him were more likely to be the
victims of agrarian unrest than the landlords they served under. After all,
they were the local boots on the ground.

A reward of £80 was offered to
anyone who could give evidence that could help to convict the assailants. Within
days, a letter which included the drawing beneath was posted above a
proclamation of the reward:

Two years later, Coulter was ambushed
again, and by three o’clock in the afternoon of May 2, 1851, he was dead. A newspaper
report on the post mortem reported eighteen
wounds on the head and one on the neck, making in all nineteen; there were also
some contusions on the knees; the skull was fractured, and driven in about half
an inch on the brain, and those two wounds were, of themselves, sufficient to
have caused death; the wounds were inflicted with a blunt instrument; found no
traces of a gunshot wound. A copy of this warning letter, posted above the
earlier reward, was found in Coulter’s possessions after his death.

The attackers in 1849 hid in the
gap in the hedge known as Sammy’s Gap.

What were the immediate
consequences? Six men were charged, but the evidence didn’t stick. Too much of
it was circumstantial and could not be corroborated. A year later, the suspects
emigrated to America. No surprise. Given the social climate at this time, there
was rarely success in prosecuting such murders. It could be worth your life to
either testify or convict.

At the time of his
death, Coulter and his wife, Mary Bailie, had two young sons: John Bailie
Coulter, the eldest, was a month shy of turning three years old, and his
younger brother Samuel was still an infant. By 1887, when this sketch was
completed, both of them were bachelor farmers in their late thirties living and
farming on their late father’s property at Shortstone.They were also supporters of the Land League
and Parnell.
The hill where they offered the land for this hut is still known today as Hut Hill.The full name of the widow, which can be seen on
a grave marker at Bridge-a-Crinn,
was Jane Wiseman.

I found the name of the
photographer, J.M. Johnston of Dundalk, in a Police Blotter listing Fenian suspects
in 1890. It is probable that he was the Joseph M. Johnson, a merchant age 46
living at House #11in Clanbrassil Street in the 1901 Census. This J.M. Johnson,
the only one residing in Dundalk, was Roman Catholic, and spoke both English
and Irish. Even more interesting, because this was rare for this time and place,
his wife spoke English, Irish, French and German and was a tea, wine, spirit
and commission agent. Another corroborating fact that this was our J.M. Johnson
was that a Joseph M. Johnson attended
a Crossmaglen meeting of the Irish National League
in 1886 (SOURCE: The Dundalk Democrat and
People’s Journal, December 11, 1886.)

A public demonstration was held on July 10 at Shortstone under the auspices of the Faughart Branch of the I.N.L.
for the purpose of condemning the action of certain properties in grazing their
cattle on the farms at Kane and Shortstone from which Patrick Callan and Mrs. Wiseman had been evicted. There
was a large attendance. The road from Dundalk to the place of meeting was
spanned at intervals with arches. There was a strong force of police present
under District-Inspector Supple and Head-Constable Ballantine, and they had
with them a Government reporter.

Perhaps the eviction date given
as 1882 should be 1887. It would be a common transcription error – one that I
am often guilty of myself. There were also evictions in 1882, so the first date may still be correct.

This is where arcane documents
such as the cancellation
books for West Shortstone become useful. It is likely that the section of
Shortstone townland where the evictions occurred were owned by Representatives
of Robert Ellis Baillie. He had died about 1866, and his son, Robert Baillie
(1809-1895) seems to have taken over the land.

There are other family
connections to Shortstone that are also worth noting here. The Peter McArdle, mentioned
as the young lad who tried to help the elderly widow Wiseman, was likely
related to the Thomas McArdle who leased land from John Baillie Coulter in 1890.
He was also probably the same man mentioned in the threatening letter posted
after the first attack on Coulter. In the letter, a Thomas McAide, of Roach was accused of having taken lands and later
in the text the anonymous letter writer claims: McAidle is woss than any of them. It is possible that there are
some ironic twists of fate in all this.

Another connection is that Mary
Baillie, the wife of Samuel Coulter and mother of John Baillie Coulter, was
related to the Baillie family who probably precipitated the evictions that
included the poor widow Wiseman.

October 2011. Willie Tracey at Shortstone.

Is there a Tracey family
connection to this story? I don’t know. According to the Griffiths
valuations of 1856, the Traceys farmed at Carrickistuck, but not at Shortstone
at that time. 1925 is the first time that a Tracy, James Tracey, was recorded in the Cancellation
Books as being at Shortstone. There are several links between the Tracey and
the Coulter families that predate this. A court case in September
16, 1880 shows that a Henry Coulter held a 999 year lease from the Tracey
family in Carrickistuck. Based on a death
certificate for John Charles Coulter in 1919 and a trustee
relationship in 1851, it seems that the Traceys and the Coulters had
intermarried at some point. This was likely what was called back then: a mixed
marriage – Catholic/Protestant.

J.M. Johnson may also have been connected in
some way with either Shortstone or the Tracey family. The clue here is that a Michael
Johnson was a sponsor at the baptism in 1877 of Joseph Tracey, son of John
Tracey and Margaret Hegarty. Obviously, there is still more to tease out in
this story if we want to better understand both motivations and
interconnections.

One thing that surprised me as
I dug into this story was how many Protestant farmers were initially involved in
the early days of the Land League and other meetings such as the one held June 18, 1836.
Not that they all stayed so committed. A Dr.
M’Keown, a protestant who was present at the first Land League Meeting in
Ulster, later evicted eight impoverished families from his land in May 1882,
including the infirm, old, and helpless
young of both sexes. They would have died had their neighbours not given
them temporary shelter.

The question is why did M’Keown,
and others like him, stop advocating for justice? Was he up past his nose in
mortgages and intergenerational bequests and entailments and unable to meet his
obligations? Many such men in his time faced this conundrum. Had he been raised
in the lap of relative luxury only to discover that the lap was made of clay
and crumbling fast? This kind of gap between expectation and reality put many men
at this time between a rock and a hard place as they tried to cling on to their
inherited place in society. As for M’Keown, and others like him, I can only
speculate about his particular fears, and rationalizations.

History tells us that an
imbalance of power, especially in a time of upheaval, often acts like an
accelerant that flares up when thrown onto the embers of resentment. Those who have
a caring streak are often catalysed into compassionate activism, while those who
are cruel tend to act even more brutally. Self interest is the most frequent trump
card when it comes to being blind to common decency. In Creggan Parish in the
mid-1800s, one can also add the heat of several long time feuds, some of which were land based,
and had lasted for generations between individual relations and neighbours. Obviously, there was no shortage
of either fuel or matches in this situation, and conditions meant that tempers were tinder dry.

Widow Wiseman and Samuel Coulter
both came from decidedly different backgrounds with respect to opportunity and
fortune, but their deaths resulted from the same unjust and unstable land laws
of the 1800s. Ironically, both these deaths, and many more like them, were part
of the reason that the land laws eventually changed, and some sort of peace became
possible. Perhaps, in some way, we owe both of them our thanks.

1881 Mar 12 Cullyhanna Land League article. This article mentions several County Armagh
men who were both Orangemen and members of the Land League. Of particular
interest to me, is the mention of David JACKSON of Urker near Crossmaglen in
South Armagh. He was not only my great-great-grandfather, but also the father
of Sir Thomas JACKSON, the focal point of my research.

September 8, 1870 I would be interested to learn more about the printer John MATTHEWS. The Peace Preservation Act in Ireland. Tuapeka Times.

About Me

Author And Researcher. I am currently writing a book on the life of Sir Thomas Jackson. He was the son of tenant farmers, born just before the Famine in South Armagh, who was knighted because he not only lead HSBC into the 20th Century, but was also responsible for assisting with the funding of much of the economic development in China & Japan in the late 1800s. My first published book was "Some Become Flowers: Living with Dying at Home".